A View from the Beach: Sunday musings…2/1/2025
Thoughts while walking on a beach past the sandcastles of those who would be gods…
I try to live a life that others could emulate. It is not the only life worth emulation, but it is my hope that it is one that could be. After all, I have children. I have grandchildren. I often find myself at professional meetings among colleagues, many of whom are 5, 10, and 20 or more years my junior. I see in many of them the shadow of my younger self. Driven and focused, mostly in the pursuit of “more.”
It’s more than a little trite, but man, if only I knew then, when I was a child, when I was a younger professional, a younger parent, what I know now about “more”.
Don’t get me wrong, “more” is good. It is usually decidedly better than “less”. Having had both at various times in my life this is pretty clear. What I’ve learned, though, is the overarching value of “enough”. “Less” and “more” always come in the context of a comparison with some thing or some person, a time or place against which the you and the now are measured and compared. Under the microscope, always trying to measure up, both “more” and “less” can feel kinda lousy.
“Less” is obvious in the lousy feeling arena; no need to expand there. If you think about “more”, ever “more”, there is no end to it. It’s a hopeless chase, an endless endeavor, forever chasing “more”. You are Sisyphus; the boulder will never reach the summit.
“Enough”, though, is sublime. Personal. Poetic. “Enough” lives within you. It might mean more to someone and less to another, but in the end it is a wonderfully liberating concept. “Enough” is a one-word Emancipation Proclamation for a life.
“Enough” is a feast.
I’ll see you next week…
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 2nd, 2025 at 4:06 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.